I guess this is: "Politicization of Science Thursday"

The NYT is running the headline: "Bush Climate Plan Rated Somewhat Improved"

As if Bush's climate record could get worse. As a standards bearer for the planet's stewardship under Bush, the grade of "F" must be assigned to the U.S. Or maybe "CF" The "CF" is not for complete failure. Let's leave it that it's what future generations will be unless we move NOW to reverse the damage we're inflicting upon the Earth.

The Earth will be fine without humans, but humans -- it could be argued -- are dependent upon the Earth for our survival.

Screw copyright protection. This article needs to available to any that wishes to view it in the future.

Here's the link

Here's the article:

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

President Bush's plan for clarifying the causes and effects of climate change has been improved over the past year but can succeed only if the research is shielded from political pressures and if more money is spent on it, an independent panel of experts said yesterday.

Administration officials, who requested the outside review of the plan, welcomed the findings, but said no significant budget increases were possible. They said climate research goals would be met mainly through improved organization.

"We can't practically expect short-term massive increases in funding; it's just not in the cards these days," said James R. Mahoney, an assistant secretary of commerce who directs the Climate Change Science Program.

The federal government currently spends about $1.7 billion a year on climate research, officials said, and there are no significant shifts in spending in the administration's 2005 budget.

The panel, assembled by the National Research Council of the National Academies, the country's leading scientific advisory group, said there was an urgent need to move from planning an expanded push in federal climate research to financing it and moving ahead.

"This is an issue where the science is pretty clearly telling us that the longer we wait to consider some of these issues, the more dramatic the impacts may turn out to be," said Thomas E. Graedel, a professor of industrial ecology at Yale and chairman of the 17-member panel.

The administration's plan for climate research is available at www.climatescience.gov, and the critique is at nationalacademies.org.

Mr. Bush first announced plans to intensify climate research in June 2001, shortly after he was criticized by many climate experts for abandoning a campaign pledge to limit power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that many scientists have linked to global warming.

Mr. Bush said more research was needed before he would consider any measures beyond voluntary programs to slow growth in emissions.

The first version of the administration's subsequent research plan was issued in November 2002. It was criticized by the same panel last February as lacking clear priorities and neglecting to take stock of existing studies pointing to risks posed by rising global temperatures. The plan was revised and released last July.

In its review of the revised plan, the panel found clearer goals, but saw few signs that enough money would be allocated for new initiatives like improving satellite observations and computer simulations of the changing atmosphere and oceans.

"There is no evidence in the plan or elsewhere of a commitment to provide the necessary funds for these newer or expanded program elements," the panel said.

It also recommended that the administration ensure the credibility of government climate research by establishing a standing review committee of outside parties with a wide variety of views.

Many environmentalists and political opponents of Mr. Bush, and some scientists at government agencies, have expressed strong concern about the potential for political interference in climate science.

They have cited a string of instances in which the White House has edited climate-related documents in ways that amplified uncertainties and eliminated references to studies pointing to significant risks.

Just before the final version of the research plan was released last summer, for example, senior Commerce Department officials shaping the document threatened to resign over last-minute efforts by senior administration officials to adjust wording, several scientists and officials involved in the dispute said.

Dr. Mahoney said a firm boundary would be maintained between science and policy. "We've got a very clear vision," he said. "Let's get the science right, and the policy gets debated in its own right."

The review panel said the plan's strongest element was its architecture for organizing the dispersed efforts of 13 agencies to focus on a few central goals, including improving knowledge of past and current climate shifts and the influences ? both natural and human ? that shape them and reducing uncertainties in projections of how Earth's climate may shift in coming decades.

"Although the plan was developed for a 10-year time frame, it could effectively guide climate change research for decades," provided it is revised every three to five years to reflect advances in the science, the panel said in a statement.

One of the biggest weaknesses in the administration's plan, the panel said, was the absence of any significant reference to existing research examining the potential effects of climate change around the United States.

Particularly notable, it said, was the omission of any reference to the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. That 2001 report, done at the request of Congress, was compiled by academic and government scientists over several years.

White House officials have been continually pressed by industry lobbyists and antiregulatory groups to remove references to the assessment from government documents.

The assessment provides "important contributions," the panel said, and the independent peer review it went through was exemplary.

Yeah, this really tees me off. I can just see Bush asking the scientific community the hard questions about the ramifications of climate change, and sincerely asking what he can do as president to avert, or slow down a global calamity.

I'll be doing as thorough a job as possible(being a layperson in the field) dissecting the policies and proposals at a later date. I have lots of material to go through, so it may be a month..blogging isn't a paying gig for me.

If you're concerned about both the government and the environment, you've no doubt heard about Bush's plans to add an additional layer of peer review or in their words to provide "broad new standards for federal regulatory agencies that would require them to seek independent appraisals of the scientific basis for many new rules before issuing them."

How odd that the broad proposals were cheered by "groups linked to industry."

Then there are the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Bush's environmental policies are like a tornado in a mobile home park. Nah. He's worse than that.